Sep 23 Daily Grind :: "Get Educated, Brah!"

"Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."

~ Mark Twain

I'm going to kick off today's Grind with one of the best April Fool's Day pranks ever. Love this professor's face as he realizes his rule about placing cellphones on speaker if a student gets a phone call during class may not be the best idea.

Today's Grind focuses on kids, schools and education. If you have kids, you'll definitely want to read this collection of articles. If you don't have kids, you should still probably read them because you may decide to have kids one day and birth control often fails no matter how careful you are. But first...the prank of all pranks:

“When there’s an obvious difference and no one is talking about it, children become confused and think there must be something ‘bad’ about it. When the children understood that the disability was not bad, but just different, many were eager to help him.” "School Talk: Introducing Disabilities to Classrooms and Friends"

ABC's new sitcom Speechless cast an actor who actually does have cerebral palsy to play a kid with cerebral palsy. I've only seen the first episode, but it doesn't feel like stunt casting as much as it feels like an important and poignant landmark casting decision; not to mention the kid is talented and comes off as a real person not a stereotype. Maybe this is the first step in getting kids to be more accepting and understanding of kids who don't look like everybody else.

The national average for kids receiving special education in schools is 13%, however in Texas that number has fallen to 8.5%. Why? Because over a decade ago, Texas officials arbitrarily decided what percentage of students should get special education services — 8.5 percent — and since then they have forced school districts to comply by strictly auditing those serving too many kids. Texas is the only state that has ever set a target for special education enrollment. How do they get away with it and why do they do it? Because they can and money.

"But that the dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country from whose bournNo traveller returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?"

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